Father stands by son

With light shining in from the bathroom and a small flashlight in hand, Amos Brown stepped into the darkness of his son's room and demonstrated how he often searched it for drugs and weapons.

Through laundry and backpacks, inside closets and drawers, under the bed and behind the dresser, Brown said during his searches, he never found so much as a cigarette.

"If he did anything, he had to be slick, because he had no idea what I was doing," Brown said.

On Monday, police arrested Brown's son Amos "A.J." Brown Jr., 17, after he turned himself in on charges of murder. Brown Jr. allegedly stabbed 17-year-old Tykwan Hunt of Bridgeport after a house party on Linden Street on Jan. 11 escalated into a fight, resulting in three other non-fatal stabbings. Hunt's body was found slumped behind shrubbery at a McDonalds on Main Avenue the morning after.

Brown Jr. turned himself in after Norwalk Police detectives secured a warrant for his arrest. He is represented by attorney Kenneth Bernhard of Westport and is scheduled to be arraigned in Stamford Superior Court Feb. 26, after the case had been transferred from Norwalk.

Amos Brown Sr. would not talk on the record about the details of the case, but he insisted that his son would be found innocent.

"My son is not a killer, and to see him locked up like that is very hard for me," Brown said.

Brown has one other son and two daughters, and said since he accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior, he's focused much of his energy on raising Brown Jr.

"There was nobody else in my life except him," Brown said. "I built my life around him."

A former board member of Norwalk Economic Opportunity Now and the local NAACP branch, Brown Sr. is known as a community leader. Lots of supportive phone calls have come in since his son's arrest, he said.

Sitting by the phone, waiting for a call from Brown Jr., who is in protective custody, the elder Brown said he tries not to think too much about his son's arrest. He has continued working for his property management and home improvement business to keep his mind off the case.

But he's used to having his son around in the evenings.

Friends used to hang out in Brown Jr.'s room, using the computer and writing music. All the while, Brown Sr. would sit in the den. Occasionally, he said he would check on the kids to see if they were staying out of trouble.

"I spied on my son," Brown said. "I spied on all of them."

He enforced a curfew of 8 p.m. for his son, but allowed him to stay over at friends' houses. The night of Hunt's murder, Brown said his son was spending the night elsewhere.

Brown Jr. got in fights, his father said, because he didn't back down from bullying, which made him a target. Brown Sr. insists his son was not in a gang, but said his stepson, Brown Jr.'s brother, Kevin Canty, was once a member of the Ely 260 gang. The association, Brown Sr. said, could have made his son a target.

Brown Jr.'s arrest won't keep his father from the community limelight.

"I will still be active in the community, seeing if we can save more kids from this violence, and this graveyard and jail," Brown Sr. said.

But he reserved harsh words for officials and other community leaders, whom he said should be doing more.

"I'm upset at the city upholding gangs," Brown said. "I'm upset with the politicians upholding gangs. I'm upset with the ministers upholding gangs. I am very upset with them because they haven't done anything to stop these gangs in Norwalk."

Staff writer Jared Newman may be reached at (203) 354-1045 or jnewman@thehour.com.

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